Empty Spaces
by justalittledazed
Summary: John sees the spaces where Sherlock used to be.


John thinks about death a lot, immerses himself in it. There's a disbelief in him when it comes to death, a wonder. Even after all the death he's come to face, it's hard for him to grasp, and especially harder now that death has taken his best friend in its clutches. He marvels over it, tries to understand it, and ultimately obsesses over it.

It's crazy, how a person can go from walking and talking to doing nothing. How the man who never slept is taking an eternal slumber under some dirt and a shiny black stone with his name on it. It's like he's waiting there for John to join him, like he found a new battlefield to view through new eyes that John couldn't see through until it was time for him to leave the world. He wonders how a person who could take up so much energy and such a large place in his heart is suddenly marked by voids. Empty chairs in empty rooms, empty papers that should be filled with his rapid fire scrawl are empty. An empty chair sits beside the one he lowers himself into after a long day, and he places his cane in it and wonders where his life has gone.

It fell down the building with Sherlock, his life became as vacant as Sherlock's gaze so quickly that it barely hit him that it was over. Empty. It all happened quickly, the hourglass came crashing down to the ground with a clatter, sand running out of the shattered glass until it was empty. There's that word again, empty. Empty bedroom, empty flat, empty John. He knows he should move on, he should stop wondering and asking for a miracle. He knows that he should find something meaningful to do, that it's unhealthy. But he can't force himself to, can't even fathom what he could do. The battlefield is gone, long faded and worn clean to the threadbare cloth he was woven from. And it wasn't fair, it wasn't It was his life, and it had been swept clean with one fall.

But there was no changing it. There were no more miracles left for John Watson, no more spectacular things. They all died with Sherlock. The final puzzle was finished, the edges unceremoniously mashed together in slots they don't necessarily fit in to make one final picture. The pieces twisted and distorted to form the face of the Doctor, plagued by sleepless nights alone in a flat with a ghost in his mind. A man with an injury in his mind that played out onto his leg, outwardly expressed with a cane and dark bags under red-streaked eyes. The mess was there, it couldn't be put back.

Eventually he sits down and opens his laptop and stares at the half-empty blog. There was nothing to write, no words to put down, no detective. Nothing. So he stared at the keys, barely registering the words he clicked out until the published post was staring him in the face.

I miss him.

He slams the computer closed and makes tea. There's a coat hanging in his closet, but he doesn't look at it. He doesn't remember how he got it, but he did. The favorite jacket of the tall man with the devilish smile. It sits in the back of the closet, behind the ugly sweater Harry bought him for Christmas a year ago, bloodstained and dusty. He couldn't look at it, but couldn't throw it away. So it sat empty, waiting for a dead patron.

The anniversary comes and goes and his miracle is waiting. Sherlock is gone and there's no stopping it. There are no more miracles for an ex-army doctor with a hole in his shoulder and a ghost in his bed. He stays in that day, doesn't show up for work, doesn't make or accept calls. And people let him. There's nothing else they can do.

Another goes by, and it hurts just as much. Years are longer than they ever seemed, too much time alone stretching the days and hours into something much more infinite. It takes a lifetime to reach three, and John has built his own armor. He doesn't admit that he loved the madman, not even three years can quell that hurt. But he doesn't feel the dull ache, doesn't imagine the man in his bed, and doesn't picture the eyes that are the same unpredictable color and intensity as the ocean staring at him over a book. He stops all of that, so he calls himself "cured" and "better". He still limps, but he smiles. Nobody says anything.

He sees Sherlock for the first time, and sits in his therapist's office thinking he's hallucinating. But he sees him again, in passing on the street. And he feels like he's been punched. He doesn't understand, the anger and the hurt flooding back through him like a flame licking the inside of his body. It's a Wednesday when his miracle shows up in the kitchen of 221B. When his favorite mug clatters to the floor, shattering glass and tea over the tile and on his bare feet. When the voice he had longed to hear finally graced him. When he punched Sherlock Holmes for the second time and kissed him for the first. It was a Wednesday.

"Hello, John"


End file.
